My dad, a union carpenter, says that carpentry is a battle against nature, specifically rain, rot and mold. There is a pathos in his work that I identify with, a need to preserve a neighborhood that is eroding with time. We often compare notes and have found many parallels in the ways that we create space, problem solve, and in the kind of measuring and planning that go into both practices. Carpentry and painting can be viewed as a struggle, against obliteration, against death. But seen optimistically, they are generative processes, the creation of new structures that will outlast their creators, gifts to the future.